DIOGENES: In Search Of An Honest Politician!

DIOGENES invites you to pull up a chair on this rainy day and read
posts from around the world.
The writing may lean to the right...but that's the way Diogenes wants it!
You may leave your opinion,
but Diogenes rarely changes his! WELCOME!

Wednesday, May 29, 2013

Obama Surrenders the War on Terror (lies about the continuing Islamic war on America)

“Don’t be afraid to see what you see,” President Reagan counseled in his
farewell address. We would do well to heed his advice as President Obama
attempts to lead America backwards, to September 10. Make no mistake: That was
the not-so-subtle message he sent last week during his speech at the National
Defense University—a speech that was so full of inaccuracies that one is left to
conclude the president is either living in an alternate universe or willfully
disregarding the facts. Just consider some of the statements he made.
1. “There have been no large-scale attacks on the United States, and our
homeland is more secure.”
In fact, Nidal Hasan killed 13 people and injured 32 others during his
shooting rampage at Ft. Hood in November 2009—an attack authorized by al Qaeda’s
franchise in Yemen (AQAP). Since the U.S. Army—no doubt following orders far up
the chain of command—refuses to classify the Ft. Hood shooting as a terrorist
attack, the survivors’ injuries and acts of bravery cannot be categorized as
“combat related.”
In addition, the Boston Marathon bombing was a large-scale attack carried out
by individuals who were radicalized to jihad and trained by jihadist elements in
Russia.
Moreover, Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab, inspired and trained by AQAP, almost
took down a passenger plane in December 2009; and Faisal Shahzad, trained by
jihadists in Pakistan, deployed an IED in Times Square in 2010. Just as catching
a thief in the act doesn’t mean he hasn’t committed a crime, the fact that these
attacks failed does not mean they were not attacks.
2. “The core of al Qaeda in Afghanistan and Pakistan is on the path to
defeat…They did not direct the attacks in Benghazi or Boston.”
Like a five-year-old, the president seems to believe that if he says
something often enough

Only Nixon Harmed a Free Press More than Obama!

The search warrant filed to investigate the Fox News reporter James Rosen
proved as many had suspected: President Obama wants to make it a crime for a
reporter to talk to a leaker. It is a further example of how President Obama
will surely pass President Richard Nixon as the worst president ever on issues
of national security and press freedom.
The government's subpoena of The Associated Press's phone records was bad
enough. But the disclosure of the search warrant in the Rosen case shows
President Obama has delved into territory never before reached by previous
presidents.
The Justice Department obtained Rosen’s e-mail by using a search warrant in
which it alleged that Rosen was a co-conspirator with a government adviser named
Stephen Kim.
SNIP
Until President Obama came into office, no one thought talking or
e-mailing was not protected by the First Amendment.
SNIP

Obamacare "Navigators": Another Sebelius Snitch Brigade?

U.S. Health and Human Services Secretary Kathleen Sebelius controls a $54
million slush fund to hire thousands of "navigators," "in-person assisters" and
counselors who will propagandize and enroll Obamacare recipients in
government-run health insurance exchanges. This nanny-state navigator corps is
the Mother of all Community Organizing Boondoggles. It's also yet another Obama
threat to Americans' privacy.
A reminder about Secretary Sebelius' sordid snooping history is in order
here. In August 2009, HHS and the White House Office of Health Reform called on
their ground troops to report on fellow citizens who dared to criticize their
federal health care takeover. Team Obama issued an all-points bulletin on the
taxpayer-funded White House website soliciting informant emails. Remember?
"If you get an email or see something on the Web about health insurance
reform that seems fishy, send it to flag@whitehouse.gov," the Obamacare
overlords urged. The feds even singled out conservative Internet powerhouse Matt
Drudge because he had featured a video compilation of Obama and other Democrats
-- in their own words -- exposing the "public option" as a Trojan Horse for
government-run health care and the elimination of private industry.
Texas GOP Sen. John Cornyn protested at the time that "these actions taken by
your White House staff raise the specter of a data collection program." The
flagging operation was shut down, but a plethora of federal disclosure
exemptions protect the Obama administration from revealing what was collected,
who was targeted and what was done with the database information.
White House lapdogs dismissed the concerns of conservatives as paranoid
delusions. Now, fast-forward three years. In light of the draconian IRS witch
hunt against tea party groups and the Justice Department's plundering of
journalists' phone records and email accounts, every tax-subsidized Obama
"outreach" initiative warrants heightened scrutiny.
Obamacare navigators will have access to highly personal data from potential
"customers" to assess their "needs." That means income levels, birthdates,
addresses, eligibility for government assistance, Social Security numbers and
sensitive medical information. They'll be targeting both individuals and small
businesses. Anyone they can lay their grubby hands on. Who's getting the
navigator grants and training? "Community groups" in 33 states that naturally
include socialized medicine-supporting unions and Saul Alinsky-steeped activist
outfits.
On Capitol Hill last week, a top Obamacare official told GOP lawmakers that
navigators will not be required to undergo background checks. Criminal records
are not automatically disqualifying -- and that includes identity theft. The
federal rule-makers will require online training of a measly 20 hours. Health
care regulations watchdog Betsy McCaughey adds that navigators "don't have to
know math or insurance, but rules announced April 5 specify you have to match
the race, ethnicity and language preferences of the neighborhood that will be
targeted."
The Obamacare navigator corps smacks of ACORN redux, stocked with
demographically tailored Democratic Party recruitment operatives, not objective,
informed insurance experts.
Sebelius and her enforcers promise strict neutrality and clean conduct. The
bureaucrats say there will be severe consequences for violating citizens'
privacy or breaking any other laws. Pffft. The Office of Special Counsel
determined that Secretary Sebelius herself violated the federal Hatch Act
prohibition on exploiting her HHS leadership position for partisan activity last
fall. She then tried to cover up her breach after the fact by classifying the
event in which she electioneered for Obama as a "personal" appearance.
Consequences? What consequences?
Sebelius has zero credibility when it comes to reining in overzealous
partisans. But she's darned good at unleashing them. During the White House
pressure campaign for Obamacare, Sebelius goaded her "brothers and sisters" from
the brass-knuckled SEIU. SEIU goon Dennis Rivera joined her on a White House
conference call in which he lambasted tea party activists as the "radical
fringe" of "right-wingers" whose protests amounted to "terrorist tactics."
Now, the SEIU is on the board of directors of Enroll America, the left-wing,
Obamacare advocacy nonprofit for whom shakedown artist Sebelius has been
soliciting funds.
Sebelius' corruptocracy runs deep. While she was governor of Kansas, an
independent inspector general reported that her appointed health policy board
had "applied pressure to alter an audit report, restricted access to legal
advice and threatened to fire her for meeting independently with legislators,"
according to the Topeka Capital-Journal.
Team Sebelius was also embroiled in a ruthless vendetta and obstruction
campaign against then-GOP Attorney General Phill Kline, who unearthed damning
evidence that the Sebelius administration had shredded key documents related to
felony charges against Sebelius' abortion racketeering friends at Planned
Parenthood.
Sebelius notoriously threatened private companies and insurers who increased
rates to cope with Obamacare coverage mandates. She bullied private companies to
meet discriminatory and arbitrary disclosure demands. And she lashed out at
newspapers that dared to report on the true costs of the Obamacare regulatory
leviathan.
You can't trust sleazy Sebelius to navigate anything with her broken ethical
compass. This is worse than the fox guarding the henhouse. She has unfettered
authority and a bottomless budget to weaponize legions more foxes who will serve
as Obamacare's eyes and ears on the ground. The snitch brigade lives.

Gasoline Myths

Plan to drive more this summer? Annoyed by the price of gas? Complaining that
oil companies rip you off?
I say, shut up. Even if gas costs $4 per gallon, we should thank Big Oil.
Think what they have to do to bring us gas.
Oil must be sucked out of the ground, sometimes from war zones or deep
beneath oceans. The drills now bend and dig sideways through as much as 7 miles
of earth. What they discover must be pumped through billion-dollar pipelines and
often put in monstrously expensive tankers to ship across the ocean.
Then it's refined into several types of gasoline, transported in trucks that
cost hundreds of thousands of dollars. Finally, your local gas station must
spend a fortune on safety devices to make sure we don't blow ourselves up while
filling the tank.
And it still costs less per ounce than the bottled water sold at gas
stations. If government sold gas, it would cost $40 per gallon. And there would
be shortages!
Another myth: Big Oil makes "excess" profit. Nonsense. The oil business is
fiercely competitive. If one company charges a penny too much, other companies
steal its business. Apple's profit margin is about 24 percent. McDonald's makes
20 percent. Oil companies make half that.
Per gallon, ExxonMobil makes about 7 cents. Governments, by contrast, grab
about 27 cents per gallon. That's the average gas tax. If anyone takes too much,
it's government.
President Obama says, "Gas costs too much." So he announced: "We've put in
place the toughest fuel economy standards in history. Over the life of a new
car, the average family will save more than $8,000 at the pump."
Sounds good. But the magic of fuel economy standards is another myth.
Susan Dudley, who runs the Regulatory Studies Center at George Washington
University, points out that many car buyers care more about safety, style,
power, etc. than mileage.
"The problem with the government's rule is that they ignore all those other
preferences ... assuming that the only thing we value is fuel economy."
Fuel economy sounds appealing when it's presented as something created at no
cost. But car dealers say it will make cars cost $3,000 more.
Also, as James Taylor, an energy expert at the Heartland Institute, pointed
out to me, fuel-economy regulations kill.
"In order to make cars more fuel-efficient, auto manufacturers make them
smaller -- using lighter materials, they're less crash-worthy ... We're seeing
thousands of people dying on the roads that shouldn't be."
You'd think automakers would strongly oppose these regulations -- but if so,
why, when President Obama unveiled the regulations, did the heads of 13 car
companies shake Obama's hand and smile?
"Even if it is a $60 billion cost to them," says Dudley, "if everyone has to
do it, they can pass it on to consumers."
In other words, normally companies compete to do things more efficiently than
rivals, in order to charge lower prices and get the lion's share of customers.
But there's no need to worry about jacking up your prices when your rivals must
do so, too. Regulation makes companies lazier, not more efficient.
Republicans at least talk about deregulation. But the "regulation-killing
Republican" is another myth. Despite being labeled a deregulator, George W. Bush
hired 90,000 new regulators. Dudley, who was their overseer, now says, "The
pressure to regulate is intense."
Almost no one seems to speak up for a true free market in energy, with
competition, innovation and unfettered consumer choice. People say regulation is
needed to counter industry "greed."
But if anyone's greedy here, it's government -- and unlike oil companies,
government doesn't have to work hard and compete to give you good service at the
lowest possible price. Government just sits there, telling companies to charge
less, telling car companies to make smaller and more dangerous cars, mandating
and subsidizing alternative fuels like ethanol -- and then telling us that we
benefit from the politicians' efforts.
The truth: We rarely benefit.

IRS higher-ups requested info on conservative groups, letters show!

Additional scrutiny of conservative organizations’ activities by the IRS did
not solely originate in the agency’s Cincinnati office, with requests for
information coming from other offices and often bearing the signatures of
higher-ups at the agency, according to attorneys representing some of the
targeted groups. At least one letter requesting information about one of the
groups bears the signature of Lois Lerner, the suspended director of the IRS
Exempt Organizations department in Washington.
Jay Sekulow, an attorney representing 27 conservative political advocacy
organizations that applied to the Internal Revenue Service for tax-exempt
status, provided some of the letters to NBC News. He said the groups’ contacts
with the IRS prove that the practices went beyond a few “front line” employees
in the Cincinnati office, as the IRS has maintained.
“We've dealt with 15 agents, including tax law specialists -- that's lawyers
-- from four different offices, including (the) Treasury (Department) in
Washington, D.C.,” Sekulow said. “So the idea that this is a couple of rogue
agents in Cincinnati is not correct.”